Next Door to Heaven (Part 7)

Next Door to Heaven (Part 7)
Ron Bailey


Setting the Stage


Luke is the main historian of the New Testament. He carefully date-stamps the beginnings of John’s work in water baptism by putting it, "in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontus Pilate being governor of Judea, Herod being tetrarch of Itrurea and the region of Trachonitus and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene." (1) Caesar Augustus died in AD 14 but Tiberius Caesar was associated with him for the last two years of his reign; this gives us a date of AD 26 for Luke’s account of John Baptist’s ministry.

Paul gives a different kind of time scale. In the passage where he had described Israel’s years of waiting for the Seed to come He refers to the coming future moment as the "time appointed by the father." And then with a note of triumph he declares when the fulness of the time had come God sent forth his Son. (2) His word for ‘fulness’ was a word used of a ship being fully manned and ready for sailing, as the English would says ‘a full ship’s complement’. We might even paraphrase it very loosely by saying when everything was completely ready God launched his Son.

The coming of Christ was not the result of a sudden impulse on the part of the Godhead, but a perfectly synchronized and perfectly executed keeping of an appointment. On the natural level we can see how the political events of the past centuries had prepared the Mediterranean world for the coming of the Truth. The momentous changes that over hundreds of years would disrupt the lives of hundreds of thousands were all the preparations for history’s central event. The stage was being set…

On the level of language the conquests of Alexander the Great, three hundred years earlier, had spread Greek culture from Greece to India. If the Finns (3) are the snow-specialists and the Hebrews are the sin-specialists then the Greeks were the thinking-specialists. They had numerous words for thought processes which gave the possibility of great exactness to communication; they were the idealists of the ancient world. Their philosophers and their philosophies still hold a place of honor in western universities. Their language developed in such a way that its prepositions, for example, could have an almost mathematical precision. Greek commerce (they were great sailors) had consolidated their cultural base around the borders of the Mediterranean. The stage was being set…

Greek ideas filtered into Judaism sometimes to advantage and sometimes not. The people of the Old Covenant who spread throughout the Mediterranean became more at home in Greek than in Hebrew and a Greek translation of their sacred scriptures was produced. (4) This is turn, gave non-Hebrews the opportunity to learn about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and to consider the moral codes of Judaism. This version of the Bible was later to become one of the most powerful weapons in the early spread of Christianity. The stage was being set…

This Greek culture mind-set was taken up by the Roman empire which followed Alexander’s and proved a lingua-franca of thoughts and ideas for western Europe. (5) The Romans who later annexed the broken remnants of Alexander’s successors also added their own contribution. The Romans were the law-specialists. Its codification, its application and its enforcement were all part of the lasting consequence of the Roman Empire. Their army operated not only as frightening machine of conquest but as an international police force.

The Romans cleared the Mediterranean of pirates. They established a system of roads to speed their armies from one location to another. In Britain there were better roads in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD under the Romans than in the 18th century! A network of roads spread from Rome to the Persian Gulf to North Africa, to the whole of Western Europe including most of Britain. Their shipping routes and road network expedited the itinerant preachers of the gospel and gave them a measure of safety. The Roman Pax Romana was harsh, but it was peace. The stage was being set…

On the inner frontiers too the time was ripe. Greek philosophies might gratify the mind but they could never warm the heart. Much Greek philosophy was highly speculative but a consensus had been reached that the physical world and the body in particular was essentially evil. Being ‘evil’ it must be restrained. In some ways philosophies were a reaction against the puerile and amoral antics of the Greek gods. The high moral ground of Judaism was an attraction to many at this time. Some converted and became thorough going Jewish proselytes, and some merely became fellow-travellers known as ‘God fearers’.

The emotional vacuum began to be filled with designer-religions from the east where rationality had no part at all. They are known as the Mystery Religions and have been described as "coming from the East these Oriental systems had over centuries first seeped into, then flooded the Empire. Spiritistic in origin; bizarre in method; immoral in manner of life; fanatical in demands; grotesque in ritual; degrading in effect, they shocked their way into the Roman world." (6) In terms of true spirituality these religions were bankrupt from their beginnings, but initiation rites supplied a sense of belonging. The stage was being set…

The heathen world was ripe for the gospel. It is remarkable how different but similar our current world is to those days. Again we have the sterile philosophical speculations of secular humanism and the bizarre practices of New Age religion. Again we have possibilities of communication on a level never before available. These, too, are days of unprecedented opportunities for the spread of the Truth. Among the people of the Old Covenant two things were poised for a unique purpose. Synagogue worship probably began in the time of the Babylonion exile. It has been said that, "Nebuchadnezzar’s battering rams breached Israel’s theology."

When Jerusalem fell in 587 BC Israel’s destiny seemed to be ruined beyond any hope of repair. David’s dynasty and all the promises that surrounded it seemed lost in the exile and humiliation of Judah’s last monarch, Zedekiah. (7) Their sacrosanct ‘son of David’, their sacrosanct city and their sacrosanct temple and priesthood disappeared in wall of flame. Every national symbol of their faith perished in that conflagration.


Beyond consolation, they mourned their loss by the rivers of Babylon. (8) But the rivers of Babylon were the scene for new beginnings too. Separated from the territorial distractions of their promised land they began a Judaism which was no longer dependent upon priest and temple; the Judaism of the synagogues. Its key workers were no longer the priests but the scribes and lawyers. It became bible-based rather than temple-based.


The Babylonian captivity was also a watershed for the development of the Diaspora; the scattered ones. (9) The people of the Old Covenant spread throughout the known world and wherever they settled they formed synagogues. (10) One legend has it that there were 394 synagogues in Jerusalem alone when Titus destroyed it in AD 70. And the vast majority of Jews lived outside their promised land. 


Between 73 & 581 BC there were six distinct deportations of the Israelites, and more fled voluntarily into Egypt and other parts of the Near East. From this time onwards, a majority of Jews would always live outside the Promised Land. (11)
 
It may be difficult for the modern reader to appreciate the size of the Diaspora. One calculation is that during the Herodian period there were about eight million Jews in the world, of whom, 2,350,000 to 2,500,000 lived in Palestine, the Jews thus constituted about 10% of the Roman Empire. (12) And wherever they settled they formed their synagogues. Synagogues which were witnesses to God’s earlier revelation to Moses.

When James the apostle had addressed the conference in Jerusalem he had been most mindful of this Jewish presence and witness throughout the world. It was with these in mind and the numerous proselytes and God-fearers that the early Christians subscribed, for love’s sake, to some simple prohibitions of diet. James had made the point very clearly in his address. For Moses has had throughout many generations those who preach him in the synagogues every Sabbath. (13)
 
These synagogue communities constituted not only a potentially fruitful mission field for the gospel, but a rich network of contacts and associations throughout the Mediterranean area. Not only ‘mission fields’ but ‘mission bases’ from which the gospel might have spread like a prairie fire. As a mission strategy it was perfect. Wherever seekers were seeking the synagogue was the perfect starting point. Spiritual pilgrims, at whatever point in their pilgrimage, had access to those who were preaching Moses and pointing to the true God. It is no accident that the synagogue or its equivalent was always Paul’s first point of contact. (14) The stage was being set…


There is a time gap of almost 430 years between the prophecy of Malachi and the events of Luke’s histories. During this time there was, no doubt, much setting of the stage. It was during this time that the synagogues grew to such importance. It was during this time that the empires of Alexander and his successors rose and fell. It was during this time that the bloody wars of the Maccabees were fought. It was during this time that the empire of Rome rose to prominence. The stage had received most of its final preparations during this time and yet there had been a strange omission. The spirit of prophecy seemed to have died out. These were the silent years. The length of the gap is not insignificant. For a third of its history the people of the Covenant had been without a Spirit-inspired messenger.


There are four messengers in the book of Malachi; the last book of the Old Testament. The name ‘Malachi’ means messenger, so he is the first. Israel, the priest-nation was to have been ‘the messenger’ (Malachi 2:7) Then in the last two chapters we are introduced to two more messengers. There is one called ‘my messenger’ (Malachi 3:1) whose work is to prepare the way for the fourth and final messenger. The final messenger is described as ‘the Lord… the messenger of the covenant’. (Malachi 3:1)


For four hundred years they waited. The super-powers of those centuries ebbed and flowed in their control of the ‘promised land’. The people of God waited. Their hopes flamed and died away again as their nationalistic heroes began a new golden age that quickly degenerated into a sordid power struggle. They waited… False Messiah’s came with their promises awakening hopes of deliverance which all came to nothing. (15) And still they waited.


Some of those who waited are known to us by name. Simeon was one who was waiting for the consolation of Israel. Anna too knew of those who were waiting for redemption, and was quick to tell them the news of what she had witnessed. (16) Perhaps many had given up hoping, but there were those like Abraham before them who contrary to hope, in hope believed. For perhaps close on 15 centuries the people had boasted a special relationship with God, and for the last four centuries He had had nothing to say to them. All natural optimism must surely have been long dead. But this too, is just the setting of the stage…


Suddenly, without any apparent warning, there comes a flurry of Holy Spirit activity. In clear preparation for some powerful new initiative from God there is often an unmistakable preparation; the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters. (17) An angel interrupts a solemn temple service with a promise of the soon arrival of a Spirit-filled messenger to be born to the aged wife of a aged priest. (18) Six months later the same angel visits a young teenager with the message that the Spirit is about to effect unheard-of miracles within her virgin body. (19)
 
In the moment that the two potential mothers meet, the older woman is filled with the Holy Spirit; a phenomenon not recorded for the previous 400 years! Three months later her aged husband, the priest, experiences the same phenomenon. (20) And an angel visits the virgin’s betrothed husband, and soon shepherds see the skies filled with angel warriors. (21) The sense of anticipation grows. The final preparations are being completed. The stage is set. 


The ‘fulness of the time’ has come… the dayspring from on high has visited us… (22) there is born to you this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord. (23) When the fulness of the time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman…(24)


Notes:
1. Luke 3:1
2. Galatians 4:2,4
3. See Chapter 1
4. The Septuagint, often referred to simply by the Roman numerals LXX.
5. Captive Greece took Rome captive: Horace
6. H Brash Bonsall
7. 2 Kings 24:17-25:7
8. Psalm 137
9. The Disapora are the people referred to in John 7:35. Jews living outside the land of Israel.
10. Acts 13:5,14; 14:1; 17:10
11. A History of the Jews: Paul Johnson.
12. Encyclopaedia Judaica xiii 871
13. Acts 15:21
14. Acts 16:13
15. Acts 5:36,37
16. Luke 2:25,38
17. Gen 1:2 Young’s Literal Translation
18. Luke 1:11-17
19. Luke 1:26-37
20. Luke 1:67
21. Matt 1:18-24
22. Luke 1:78
23. Luke 2:11
24. Gal 4:4